Crime Research and Victimology

As one of only a few research institutes in Germany, infas conducts crime research and victim research (victimology) and compiles reliable statistics on various aspects of the topic.

The Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik (German Uniform Crime Report) records the extent of this delinquency in Germany. However, those reports deal with police statistics on officially registered delinquencies only. Germany lacks – unlike other countries, the USA and Great Britain in particular – regular dark figures' surveys with uniform methodological standards. Population surveys are "new" instruments of criminology in order to obtain representative statements concerning the occurrence of victimisation within the population and thus to shed light on the dark field of unreported cases.